Cricket
Australia to go easy on Scotland to knock out England? Josh Hazelwood responds
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Australian pacer Josh Hazelwood opened up about Australia’s strategy to knock England out of the T20 World Cup 2024. The Mitchell Marsh-led team has already made it to the Super 8 stage by thrashing Namibia in the Group B encounter. Australia realise the potential threat their arch-rivals, England, could pose if they meet again in the tournament. Hence, Hazelwood revealed that the Australian team could look to plan England’s ouster during their encounter against Scotland. England currently stand in a precarious situation in the Group B table with no wins to their name.
While speaking to the media in the post-match press-conference, Hazelwood said that Australia found themselves in a tough position for the very first time as they looked to keep England out of Super 8 contention. He mentioned that even though, there is no strategy yet, but the team might look to flounder England’s chances.
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“Yeah, I think so. In this tournament you potentially come up against England at some stage again and, as you said, they’re probably one of the top few teams on their day, and we’ve had some real struggles against them in T20 cricket, so if we can get them out of the tournament that’s in our best interest as well as probably everyone else,” Hazelwood said.
Australia registered an emphatic win by 9 wickets over Namibia at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, Antigua. In a one-sided affair, Australia chased down the target of 73 runs within 5.4 overs as they registered their highest-ever powerplay total.
“But yeah, it’ll be interesting to see. We’ve never really been in this position before as a team I don’t think, so whether we have discussions or not, we’ll just try and play it again the way we did tonight. Yeah, that’ll be up to people, not me.”
Aus to go easy on Scotland?
Hazelwood shed light on what could be Australia’s potential plan during the match against Scotland.
“Not too sure really, whether you get close and you just knock it around and drag it out. There’s a few options there, but as you said, to take confidence from winning and winning well, I think that’s almost more important than potentially trying to knock someone else out. They’ve still got a lot to do on their behalf as well, so I think it’ll become clearer the closer we get to that sort of stuff,” Hazelwood said.
England’s win in their next 2 matches against Oman and Namibia would not be enough as they would want Scotland to lose against Australia to make it to the Super 8 stage. Meanwhile, Scotland have 5 points from 3 matches with 2 wins to their name.
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